the gallant fellows whose humble names were written in the
regimental books? In reading of the Wellington wars, and the conduct
of the men engaged in them, I don't know whether to respect them or
to wonder at them most. They have death, wounds, and poverty in
contemplation; in possession, poverty, hard labor, hard fare, and
small thanks. If they do wrong, they are handed over to the inevitable
provost-marshal; if they are heroes, heroes they may be, but they
remain privates still, handling the old brown-bess, starving on the old
twopence a day. They grow gray in battle and victory, and after thirty
years of bloody service, a young gentleman of fifteen, fresh from a
preparatory school, who can scarcely read, and came but yesterday with a
pinafore in to papa's dessert--such a young gentleman, I say, arrives
in a spick-and-span red coat, and calmly takes the command over our
veteran, who obeys him as if God and nature had ordained that so
throughout time it should be.

That privates should obey, and that they should be smartly punished if
they disobey, this one can understand very well. But to say obey for
ever and ever--to say that Private John Styles is, by some physical
disproportion, hopelessly inferior to Cornet Snooks--to say that Snooks
shall have honors, epaulets, and a marble tablet if he dies, and that
Styles shall fight his fight, and have his twopence a day, and when
shot down shall be shovelled into a hole with other Styleses, and so
forgotten; and to think that we had in the course of the last war
some 400,000 of these Styleses, and some 10,000, say, of the Snooks
sort--Styles being by nature exactly as honest, clever, and brave as
Snooks--and to think that the 400,000 should bear this, is the wonder!

Suppose Snooks makes a speech. "Look at these Frenchmen, British
soldiers," says he, "and remember who they are. Two-and-twenty years
since they hurled their King from his throne and murdered him" (groans).
"They flung out of their country their ancient and famous nobility--they
published the audacious doctrine of equality--they made a cadet
of artillery, a beggarly lawyer's son, into an Emperor, and took
ignoramuses from the ranks--drummers and privates, by Jove!--of whom
they made kings, generals, and marshals! Is this to be borne?" (Cries of
"No! no!") "Upon them, my boys! down with these godless revolutionists,
and rally round the British lion!"

So saying, Ensign Snooks (whose flag, which he can't carry